Combining ontologies and IFML models regarding the GUIs of rich internet applications

Abstract

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) is a new kind of web applications. These applications provide more effective graphical components and promote the fusion of traditional applications and client-server applications. They also furnish convivial and interactive interfaces similar to desktop applications. However RIAs designing and implementation are time and cost consuming. To meet RIAs requirements, we propose a new approach based on Model Driven Engineering methodology to generate GUIs from abstract models. The structural and dynamic aspects of GUIs are modeled to represent complete RIA interfaces. Our model driven development process is based on Ontology and IFML; The logical description of UI components is presented by the ontology domain and their interactions are captured by IFML. The proposed process takes as input abstract models. Then, we apply transformations on these models to produce a code representing Flex rich interfaces. Our approach is illustrated by an example of an e-commerce web site interface.